A Witch of the Hills, v. 1 [of 2]

CHAPTER IV

It was Saturday evening; a week of fog having been succeeded by a week of rain, the pavements were now well coated with black slimy mud, in which one kept one's footing as best one could, stimulated by plentiful showers of the same substance, in a still more fluid state, flung by the wheels of passing vehicles.

Oh, wisely-governed city, where there is work for thousands of starving men, while thousands of men are starving for want of work! If a boy can keep a crossing clean in a crowded thoroughfare, could not an organised gang of men, ten times as numerous and twice as active as our gentle scavengers, save the sacred boots, skirts, and trousers of the respectable classes from that brush-resisting abomination, London mud? I respectfully recommend this suggestion to my betters with the assurance that, if it is considered of any value, there are plenty more where that came from.

Starting from Covent Garden, I made my way through King Street, Garrick Street, Cranbourne Street, Leicester Square and Coventry Street, into Regent Street, and was struck by a hundred common London sights and incidents which, in the old days, when my own life was so idle and yet so absorbing, had entirely escaped my notice. Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly, St. James's Street, I made the tour of them all; past the clubs, of many of which I was a member, brushing, unrecognised, by a dozen men who had known me well, into Trafalgar Square, where the gas-lamps cast long glittering lines of light on the wet pavement, and the spire of St. Martin's and the dome of the National Gallery rose like gray shadow-palaces above in the rainy air.

I dined at a restaurant in the Strand, and then, growing confident in the security of my disguise, I thought I would take a farewell glance at an old chum who had run Edgar pretty close in my esteem. He was an actor, and was fulfilling an engagement at a theatre in the Strand. When I add that he played what are technically called 'juvenile' parts—that is to say, those of the stage lovers—my taste may seem strange, until I explain that Fabian Scott was the very worst of all the fashionable 'juveniles,' being addicted to literary and artistic pursuits and other intellectual exercises which, while permissible and innocuous to what are called 'character' actors, are ruin to 'juveniles,' whose business requires vigour rather than thought, picturesqueness rather than feeling. So that Fabian, with his thin keen face, his intensity, and some remnant of North-country stiffness, stood only in the second rank of those whom the ladies delighted to worship; and becoming neither a great artist nor a great popinjay, gave his friends a sense of not having done quite the best with himself, but was a very interesting, if somewhat excitable companion. For my own part I had then, not knowing how vitally important the question of his character would one day become to me, nothing to wish for in him save that he were a little less sour and a little more sincere.

The stage-door was up a narrow and dirty court leading from the Strand. At the opening of the court stood a stout fair man, who looked like a German, and whose coarse, swollen face and dull eyes bore witness to a life of low dissipation. He was respectably but not well dressed, and he swung the cheap and showy walking-stick in his hand slowly backwards and forwards, in a stolidly swaggering and aggressive manner. I should not have noticed him so particularly, but for the fact that he filled the narrow entrance to the passage so completely that I had to ask him to let me pass. Instead of immediately complying, he looked at me from my feet to my head with surly, half-tipsy insolence, and gave a short thick laugh.

'Oh, so you're one of the swells, I suppose, who come hanging round stage-doors to tempt hard-working respectable women away from their lawful husbands! But it won't do. I tell you it won't do!'

I pushed him aside with one vigorous thrust and went up the court, followed by the outraged gentleman, who made no attempt to molest me except by a torrent of abusive eloquence, from which I gathered that he was the husband of one of the actresses at the theatre, and that she did not appreciate the virtues of her lord and master as he considered she ought, but that, nevertheless, he persisted in affording her the protection of his manly arm, and would do so in spite of all the d——d 'mashers' in London.

At this point the stage-doorkeeper came out of his little box, and informed the angry gentleman that if he went on disgracing the place by his scandalous conduct his wife's services would be dispensed with; 'and if there's no money for her to earn, there'll be no beer for you to drink, Mr. Ellmer,' continued the little old man, with more point than politeness.

The threat had instant effect. Mr. Ellmer subsided into indignant mumbling, and went down the court again.

I had forgotten myself in interest at the rout of Mr. Ellmer, to whom I had taken a rabid dislike, and was standing in the full, if feeble light of the gas over the stage-door, when an inner door was thrust open, and the next moment Fabian Scott was shaking my hand heartily.

'Hallo, Harry! I am glad to see you again. I was afraid you were going away without a word to your old friends; but you were always better than your reputation. Got over your accident all right—eh?'

'As well as could be expected, I suppose. I start for Germany to-morrow.'

'Ah!' By this one exclamation he signified that he understood the case, and knew that my mind was definitely made up. Actors are men of the world, and I felt the relief of talking to him after the stolid and obstinate misapprehension with which dear old Edgar persisted in meeting my reasons for saying good-bye to society. 'It was good of you not to go without coming here,' he went on, appreciating the fact that my visit must have entailed an effort.

'To tell the truth, I meant to see you without your seeing me; but I got interested in a moral victory just obtained by your doorkeeper over an eloquent visitor, and so you caught me.'

Scott glanced at the swaggering Ellmer.

'Drunken brute!' said he, with much disgust. 'His wife—a hard-working little woman, who acts under the name of Miss Bailey—has had to bring her child to the theatre with her to-night, for fear he should get home before her and frighten the poor little thing. Look! here they come. One wonders how a wild beast can be the father of an angel.'

Scott was an ardent worshipper of beauty; but I, a cooler mortal, could not think his raptures excessive when he stood aside to make way for a slim, pale, pretty woman, to whose hand there clung a child so beautiful that my whole heart revolted at the thought that the tipsy ruffian a few paces off was her father. Both mother and child were shabbily dressed, in clothes which gave one the idea that November had overtaken them before they could afford to replace the garments of July. The little one was about eight years old, a slender creature with a flower-like face, round which, from under a home-made red velvet cap, her light-brown hair fell in a naturally curly tangle. Something in her blue eyes reminded me of the childlike charm of Helen's. Scott stopped them to say good-night, effusively addressing the child as his little sweetheart, and telling her that if the boy who gave her an apple last Sunday gave her another the next day, he should find out where he lived and murder that boy.

'Beware, Babiole, of arousing the jealousy of a desperate man,' he ended, folding his arms and tossing back his head.

The child took his outburst quite seriously.

'If he offers me another apple I must take it,' she answered in a sweet demure little voice. 'It would be rude to refuse. But you needn't be angry, for I can like you too.'

'Like me too!' thundered Scott, with melodramatic gestures. 'Heaven and earth! This is how the girl dares to trifle with the fiercest passion that ever surged in a human breast!'

'If you're fierce I shan't like you,' said the little one, in her measured way. 'Papa's fierce, and he frightens me and mamma.'

'Will you like me, little madam?' I ventured; and, knowing that my disfigured face was well concealed, I held out my hand. 'I will love you very gently.'

I made my voice as soft as I could, but the deep tones or the sombre black figure frightened her. The quaint matronly demeanour suddenly gave way to a child's fright, and she hid her face in the folds of her mother's black cloth jacket. Then mamma began to rebuke in a voice and manner oddly like the child's; and Fabian seized Babiole and lifted her up to kiss her.

'And now will you give me a kiss?' said he to her.

'Yes, Mr. Scott.' She gave him a kiss with the same demure simplicity.

'And will you promise to kiss nobody but me till you see me again?'

'Really, Mr. Scott,' interrupted the mother rather tartly, 'you shouldn't put such ideas into the child's head. They'll come quite soon enough of their own accord.'

She had one eye upon her husband, who was waiting farther down the court; and the wifely desire to be 'at him' seemed to put a little extra vinegar into her tone. With a hasty good-night to Fabian, and a frosty little bow to the unknown black figure, she said, 'Come, Babiole,' and hurried away with the child.

Scott put his arm through mine, and we followed them slowly back into the Strand, where, amidst the throng of people who had just poured out of the theatres, we soon lost sight of them. We did not go far together, for Fabian had an appointment to supper; but before we parted, he, more ready-witted than Edgar, had talked me into a promise that, when the summer came round and he had a chance of a holiday, I would let him know where I was, that he might invite himself to come and see me.

'You don't think I shall come back among you again, then?' I said curiously.

'I don't know. The taste for wandering, like all other tastes, grows with indulgence. Good-bye, Harry, and God bless you whereever you go.'

I wrung his hand, scarcely able to speak. His words were a prophecy, I knew; and at the moment of taking this last outsider's look at the scenes of my old life, it seemed to me that a dungeon-door had swung to on youth and hope and happiness, shutting me in for ever to a very lonely solitude.

'Good-bye, good-bye, Fabian,' said I, and I walked hastily away lest I should keep on wringing his hand all night.

For three hours more I walked about the London streets, unable to tear myself away from them, sneaking again past the clubs, with a feeling of gushing affection towards a score of idiotic young men and prosy old ones who passed me on the pavement on their way in or out, devoured by a longing to exchange if only half a dozen words with men whom I had often avoided as bores. Near the steps of the Carlton I did try to address one quiet old gentleman whom, on account of his rapacity for papers, I had cordially hated. A ridiculous shyness made me hoarse; and on hearing a husky voice close to his ears in almost apologetic tones, he started violently, cried, 'Eh, what? No, no! Here—hansom!' and I retreated like one of the damned.

I got into Grosvenor Square, passed through a throng of carriages, and saw the bright lights in a house where they were giving a birthday dance to which I had been specially invited months before. Helen would be there, I knew; I felt a jealous satisfaction in remembering that old Saxmundham was away, nursing his gout at Torquay. What of that? There were plenty of other men to step into my shoes. At first I thought I would stay, and walk up and down the square for the chance of one more look at her. How well I knew how she would come down the steps, in a timid hesitating way, half-dazzled by the lights she had just left, poising each little dainty foot a moment above the next step, flit into the carriage like a soft white bird, and drop her pretty head back with a sigh, 'Oh, I'm so tired, mamma!' her white throat curved gently above the swansdown of her cloak, the golden fringe of curls falling limply almost to her eyebrows. I must wait—I must see her again! What! On the arm of another man! The blood rushed into my head as these incoherent thoughts rose rapidly in my mind; all the passions of my life, of my youth, dammed up as they had suddenly been by my accident and its fatal consequences, seemed to surge up, break through the barriers of resignation and resolve, and make a madman of me. I was not master of myself, I could not count upon what I should do if I saw her; seeing my way no more than if I had been blind or intoxicated, I turned away, and finding myself presently in silent Bond Street, I got into a hansom and went back to my hotel.

I fancied that night that sooner or later I should end by suicide; but in the morning I had to pack, to buy things for my journey, and to set out on my travels. The worst wrench was over; before I had left England a week, I was almost a philosopher.

For five years I lived a wanderer's life, and found it fairly to my liking. I hunted the boar in Germany, the wolf in France, went salmon-fishing in Norway, shot two tigers in India; got as far as California in search of adventures, of which I had plenty; passed a fortnight with Red Indians, whom on the whole I prefer in pictures; and began to acquire a distaste for civilisation, mitigated by enjoyment of meetings once a year with Edgar and Fabian Scott.

I retained the lease of a shooting-box and of a few miles of deer-forest by the Deeside, between Ballater and picturesque little Loch Muick. Larkhall, as the house was called, became, therefore, our yearly rendezvous. On our second meeting, the party was increased by a new member, Mr. William Fussell, a gentleman who was 'something in the City.' I never could quite make out what that something was, but it must have been some exceedingly pleasant and lucrative profession, since Mr. Fussell, while constantly describing himself as one of the unlucky ones, was always in spirits high, not to say rollicking, and was gifted with powers of enjoyment which could only be the result of long and assiduous practice. I had met him at a German hotel, where I had been struck by the magnificent insolence of his assertion that he had acquired a thorough command of the German language in three weeks, and by the astonishing measure of success which attended his daring plunges into that tongue. He was serenely jolly, selfish, and sociable, pathetically complaining of his wife's conduct in letting him come away for his holiday by himself, and enjoying himself very much without her. He was so envious of my good fortune when I said that I was going boar-hunting, that I invited him to accompany me; and as he showed much pluck in a rather nasty encounter we had with an infuriated boar, and much frankness in owning afterwards that he was frightened, I forthwith invited him to Scotland, and he accepted the invitation, as he did all good things which came in his way, with avidity.

At the third of our yearly meetings a fifth and last member joined us. This was a clever young Irishman, of good family, small fortune, sickly body, and still sicklier mind, to whom accident had put me under a small obligation, which I was glad to repay by enabling him to visit the Highlands, to which his doctor had prescribed a visit. He had been making an exhaustive and strictly philosophical inquiry into the iniquities of Paris, in the corruption of which he appeared to revel; indeed, he was clever enough to find so much depravity in every spot he had visited, that I wondered what repulsive view he would be able to take of our sweet-scented fir-forests, and the long miles of the rippling winding Dee; or whether, in the absence of labyrinthine mazes of dirt and disease, vice and crime to explore and minutely expose, he would pine and die.

Except these two, I had, during those five years of wandering, made no new friend. My appalling ugliness, mitigated as it was by time, had, together with the reserve it taught me, to a great degree isolated me. But perfect independence has its pleasures, and I was not an unhappy man. Until the end of the fourth year I had not even a servant, and I avoided all women; at that point, however, I yielded to the fatal human weakness of attaching to one's self some fellow-creature, and engaged as my personal attendant a cosmopolitan individual, whose qualifications for the post consisted in the fact that he had been a lawyer's clerk in England, a cow-boy in Mexico, had had charge of a lunatic at Naples, and was a deserter from the Austrian army. Plain to begin with, deeply marked with smallpox, and disfigured by a sabre-cut across the nose, he was even uglier than I, a fact which seemed, from the frequency with which he alluded to it, to gratify him as much as it did me. His name was John Ferguson, but it did not occur to me to connect his name with his origin until the time came to prepare for my fifth annual visit to Scotland.

'I should have thought one plain countenance about you was enough, sir, without your wanting to see them at every turn,' he said ill-temperedly, when told to pack up.

'I suppose you come from Auld Reekie yourself, then, since you're so reluctant to go back to it?'

'Well, sir, and where's the harm of being born there, provided you get away from it as early as you can, and never go back to it till you can help!'

'Why, Ferguson, that's spoken like a true patriot.'

'Indeed, sir, I hope I am wise enough not to hold a place the better for having produced such a poor creature as myself,' said John, who could always give a good account of himself in an argument.

But once established at Larkhall, Ferguson found himself so comfortable that, at the end of the fortnight's visit of my friends, he again made objection to packing up, which I was in the mood to listen to indulgently.

'It seems a pity like to leave the place till the shooting season's over, don't it, sir?' he hazarded one morning.

'Yes, Ferguson, perhaps it does.'

'The Continent wouldn't run away if it was left to look after itself a few weeks longer, would it, sir?' he went on.

'No, Ferguson, perhaps it wouldn't,' said I.

'Shall I leave the packing till to-morrow, sir?' he then asked.

'Well, yes, I think you may.'

From which it is clear that Ferguson had already been shrewd enough to assume a proper authority over his nominal master.

I had become a little weary of wandering, and although I by no means intended to give up the nomadic life which I had led for five years, I thought a couple of months' rest would be a pleasant change; I could be on the move before the cold weather set in. But September passed, and October and November came, and it grew very bleak; and still I stayed on, finding a new pleasure in the changed aspect of the gaunt hills, in seeing the snow patches grow larger and larger on Lochnagar, in outstaying the last of the late visitors, and in finding a spot where solitude needed no seeking.

The railway runs from Aberdeen to Ballater. One morning, arriving at the little station for my papers, I found a train just starting, and was seized by an impulse to pay a short visit to the granite city. A feeling left by my wandering life made it always difficult for me to see a train or a boat start without me. So I sent a boy to Larkhall with a message to Ferguson, who, with a lad under him, constituted my entire household, took my ticket and started. It was past five when I reached Aberdeen; after a sharp walk to the brig o' Balgownie and back, I hired a private room at an hotel, and dined by myself. Making inquiries about the theatre, I learnt that the entertainment that week was very poor, and further that it had been so badly patronised that it was doubtful whether the unfortunate players would get their meagre salaries. I was glancing at the yellow bill which advertised Rob Roy as a Saturday night attraction, when I read the names of Miss Bailey and Miss Babiole Bailey.

I got up at once and walked quickly down to the little theatre.

CHAPTER V

I remember very little of the performance that night, except the painful impression produced upon me by the sight of the effort with which a tall spectre-like woman, with sunken hollow face and feeble voice, in whom I with difficulty recognised pretty Mrs. Ellmer, dragged herself through the part of Diana Vernon. Babiole I utterly failed to distinguish. Looking out as I did for my little eight-year old fairy, with gold-brown hair curling naturally in large loose rings over her blue eyes, I could not be expected to know that an awkward sparrow-legged minion of the king, wearing high boots, a tabard, and a parson's wideawake pinned up and ornamented with a long white feather, was what five years and a limited stage wardrobe had made of the lovely child.

I waited for them at the stage door a long time after the performance was over, saw the rest of the little company come out in twos and threes, one or two depressed and silent, but most of them loudly cursing their manager, the Scotch nation in general, and the people of Aberdeen in particular. Then the manager himself came out with his wife, a buxom lady who had played Helen Macgregor with a good deal of spirit, but who seemed, from the stoical forbearance with which she received the outpourings of her husband's wrath at his ill-luck, to be a disappointingly mild and meek person in private life. 'But what will they do, Bob? I believe the mother's dying,' I heard her protest gently. 'Can't help that. We must look out for ourselves. And Marie will make a better juvenile at half Miss Bailey's screw,' said her husband gruffly. Last of all came Mrs. Ellmer, thinner and shabbier than ever, leaning on the arm of an overgrown girl a little shorter than herself, whose childishly meagre skirts were in odd contrast with the protecting old-fashioned manner in which she supported her mother, and whispered to her not to cry, they would be all right.

I made myself known rather awkwardly, for when I raised my hat and said, 'Mrs. Ellmer, I think,' they only walked on a little faster. The case was too serious with them, however, for me to allow myself to be easily rebuffed. I followed them with a long and lame speech of introduction.

'Don't you remember—five years ago—in the Strand, when you were acting at the "Vaudeville"—Mr. Fabian Scott?'

Babiole stopped and whispered something; Mrs. Ellmer stopped too, and held out her hand with a wan smile and a sudden change to a rather effusive manner.

'I beg your pardon, I am sure. I remember perfectly, Mr. Scott introduced you to me as a very old friend of his. You will excuse me, won't you? One doesn't expect to see gentlemen from town in these uncivilised parts. Babiole, my dear, you remember Mr.——'

'Maude,' said I. 'It is very good of you to remember me at all, after such a long time. But I couldn't resist the temptation of speaking to you; one sees, as you say, so few beings up here whom one likes to call fellow-creatures. Miss Babiole, you've "growed out of knowledge." I suppose you haven't seen much of our friend Fabian lately, Mrs. Ellmer?'

'No, indeed. I went on tour at the end of the season when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, and we have been touring ever since.'

'Don't you get tired of the incessant travelling? I suppose you seldom stay more than a week at each place?'

'Sometimes only two or three nights. It is extremely fatiguing. In fact, I am going to take a rest for a short time, for I find the nightly work too much for me in my present state of health,' said she, with a brave attempt to check the tremor in her voice, which was unspeakably piteous to me who knew the true reason of the 'rest.'

'If you are going to stay in Aberdeen, I hope you will allow me to call upon you. I live near Ballater, forty miles away in the country, so you may guess how thankfully I snatch at a chance of seeing a little society.'

At the word 'society' Mrs. Ellmer laughed almost hysterically.

'I am afraid you would find solitude livelier than our society,' she said, with a pitiful attempt to be sprightly.

'Well, will you let me try?'

'Really, Mr. Maude, when we are in the country we live in such a very quiet way. Of course it's different when one is in town and has one's own servants; and these Scotch people have no notion of waiting at table or serving things decently.'

'I know, I know,' I broke in eagerly. 'I'm used to all that myself. Why, I live in a tumble-down old house with a monkey and a soldier for my household, so you may judge that I have got used to the discomforts of the North.'

I saw Babiole stealthily shake her mother's arm, and move her lips in a faint 'Yes, yes,'. Reluctantly, and with more excuses for having let the agent-in-advance take lodgings for them which they would not have looked at had they known what a low neighbourhood they were in, Mrs. Ellmer at last consented that I should call and take tea with them next day.

I went back to my hotel and engaged a room for the night. The poor woman's sunken face haunted me even in my sleep; and I grew nervous when half-past four came, lest I should hear on arriving at the bare and dirty-looking stone house which I had already taken care to find out, that she was dead. However, my fears had run away with me. On my knocking at the door of the top flat of the little house, Babiole opened it, pretty and smiling, in a simple dress of some sort of brown stuff, with lace and a red necklace round her fair slim throat. She had not seen my face before by daylight; and I saw, by the flash of horror that passed quickly over her features and was gone, how much the sight shocked her.

'I was afraid you would forget to come, perhaps,' she said, in the prim little way I remembered, as she led the way into a small room, in which no one less used to the shifts of travel than I was could have detected the ingenious artifices by which a washhand-stand became a sideboard, and a wardrobe a book-case. The popular Scotch plan of sleeping in a cupboard disposed of the bed.

Mrs. Ellmer looked better. Whether influenced by her daughter's keen perception that I was a friend in time of need, or pleasantly excited at the novelty of receiving a visitor, there was more spontaneity than I had expected in her voluble welcome, more brightness in the inevitable renewal of her excuses for the simplicity of their surroundings. To me, after my long exile from everything fair or gentle in the way of womanhood, the bare little room was luxurious enough with that pretty young creature in it; for Babiole, though she had lost much of her childish beauty, and was rapidly approaching the 'gawky' stage of a tall girl's development, had a softness in her blue eyes when she looked at her mother, which now seemed to me more charming than the keen glance of unusual intellect. She had, too, the natural refinement of all gentle natures, and had had enough stage training to be more graceful than girls of her age generally are. Altogether, she interested me greatly, so that I cast about in my mind for some way of effectually helping them, without destroying all chance of my meeting them soon again.

Babiole brought in the tea herself, while Mrs. Ellmer carefully explained that Mrs. Firth, the landlady, had such odd notions of laying the table and such terribly noisy manners, that, for the sake of her mother's nerves, Babiole had undertaken this little domestic duty herself. But, from a glimpse I caught later of Mrs. Firth's hands, as she held the kitchen-door to spy at my exit from behind it, I think there may have been stronger reasons for keeping her in the background when an aristocratic and presumably cleanly visitor was about.

Babiole did not talk much, but when, in the course of the evening, I fell to describing Larkhall and the country around it, in deference to poor Mrs. Ellmer's thirsty wish to know more of the rollicking luxury of my bachelor home, the girl's eyes seemed to grow larger with intense interest; and, after a quick glance at my face, which had, I saw, an unspeakable horror for her, she fixed her eyes on the fire, and remained as quiet as a statue while I enlarged on the good qualities of my monkey, my birds, my dog, and the view from my study window of the Muick just visible now between the bare branches of the birch-trees.

'I should like to live right among the hills like that,' she said softly, when her mother had exhausted her expressions of admiration.

'Would you? You would find it very lonely. In winter you would be snowed up, as I shall most certainly be in a week or two; and even when the roads are passable you don't meet any one on them, except, perhaps, a couple of peasants, whose language would be to you as unintelligible as that of wild animals going down into the village to get food.'

'But you can live there.'

'Circumstances have made me solitary everywhere.'

She looked up at me; her face flushed, her lips trembled with unutterable pity, and the tears sprang to her eyes.

Custom had long since made me callous to instinctive aversion, but this most unexpected burst of intelligent sympathy made my heart leap up. I said nothing, and began to play with the tablecloth.

Mrs. Ellmer, in the belief that the pause was an awkward one, rushed into the breach, and disturbed my sweet feeling rather uncouthly.

'I am sure, Mr. Maude, no one thinks the worse of you for the accident, whatever it was, that disfigured you. For my part, I always prefer plain men to handsome ones; they're more intelligent, and don't think so much of themselves.'

Babiole gave her mother an alarmed pleading look, which happily absorbed my attention and neutralised the effect of this speech. I could have borne worse things than poor Mrs. Ellmer's rather tactless and insipid conversation for the sake of watching her daughter's mobile little face, and I am afraid they must have wished me away long before I could make up my mind to go. Babiole came to the outer door with me, and I seized the opportunity to ask her what they were going to do.

'Mrs. Ellmer doesn't look strong enough to act again at present,' I suggested.

The girl's face clouded.

'No. And even if she were, you see——' She stopped.

'Of course. Her place would be filled up?'

'Yes,' very sorrowfully. Then she looked up again, her face grown suddenly bright and hopeful, as with a flash of sunshine. 'But you needn't be afraid for us. Mamma is so clever, and I am young and strong; we shall be all right. We should be all right now if only——'

'If only?'

'Why, you see, you mustn't think it's mamma's fault that we are left in a corner like this; you don't know how she can save and manage on—oh! so little. But whenever she has, by care and making things do, saved up a little money, it—it all goes, you know.'

The sudden reserve which showed itself in her ingenuous manner towards the last words was so very suggestive that the true explanation of this phenomenon flashed upon my mind.

'Then somebody else puts in a claim,' I suggested.

The girl laughed a little, her full and sensitive red lips opening widely over ivory-white even teeth, and she nodded appreciation of my quick perception.

'Somebody else wants such a lot of things that somebody else's wife and daughter can do without,' she said, with a comical little look of resignation. And, encouraged by my sympathetic silence, she went on, 'And he has so much talent, Mr. Maude. If he would only go on painting as poor mamma goes on acting, he could make us all rich—if he liked. And instead of that——'

'Babiole!' cried her mother's voice, rather tartly.

'Yes, mamma.' Then she added, low and quickly, with a frightened glance back in the dusk, towards the door of their room, 'It's high treason to say even so much as this, but it is so hard to know how she tries and yet not to speak of it to any one. I don't mean to blame my father, Mr. Maude, but you know what men are——'

It seemed to occur to her that this was an indiscreet remark, but I said 'Yes, yes,' with entire concurrence; for indeed who should know what men were better than I? After this she seemed as anxious to get rid of me as civility allowed, but I had something to say.

I gabbled it out fast and nervously, in a husky whisper, lest mamma's sharp ear should catch my proposal, and she should nip it in the bud.

'Look here, Miss Babiole; if you like the hills, and you don't mind the cold, and your mother wants a rest and a change, listen. I was just going to advertise for some one to act as caretaker in a little lodge I've got—scarcely more than a cottage, but a little place I don't want to go to rack and ruin. If you and she could exist there in the winter—it is a place where peat may be had for the asking, and it really isn't an uncomfortable little box, and I can't tell you what a service you would be doing me if you would persuade your mother to live in it until—until I find a tenant, you know. In summer I can get a splendid rent for the place, tiny as it is, if only I can find some one to keep it from going to pieces in the meantime. It's not badly furnished,' I hurried on mendaciously, 'and there's an old woman to do the housework——'

But here Babiole, who had been drinking in my words with parted lips and starlight eyes like a child at its first pantomime, dazzled, bewildered, delighted, drew herself straight up, and became suddenly prim.

'In that case, Mr. Maude,' said she, with demure pride that resented the suspicion of charity, 'if the old woman can take care of the house, surely she doesn't want two other people to take care of her.'

'But I tell you she's dead!' I burst out angrily, annoyed at my blundering. 'There was an old woman to look after the place, but she was seventy-four, and she died the week before last, of old age—nothing infectious. Now, look here; you tell your mother about it, and see if you can't persuade her to oblige me. I'm sure the change would do her good; for it's very healthy there. Why, you know the Queen lives within eight miles of my house, and you may be sure her Majesty wouldn't be allowed to live anywhere where the air wasn't good. Now, will you promise to try?'

She said 'Yes,' and I knew, from the low earnest whisper in which she breathed out the word, that she meant it with all her soul. I left her and almost ran back to my hotel, as excited as a schoolboy, longing for the next morning to come, so that I could go back to Broad Street, and learn the fate of my new freak. Any one who had witnessed my anxiety would have decided at once that I must be in love with either the mother or the daughter; but I was not. The promise of a new interest in life, of a glimpse of pleasant society up in my hills, and the fancy we all occasionally have for being kind to something, were all as strong as my pity for the mother, my admiration for the daughter, and my respect for both.

I was debating next morning how soon it would be discreet to call, when a note was brought to me, which had been left 'by a young lady.' I tore it open like a frantic lover. It was from Mrs. Ellmer, an oddly characteristic letter, alternately frosty and gushing, but not without the dignity of the hard-working. She said a great deal ceremoniously about my kindness, a great deal about her friends in London, her position and that of 'my husband, a well-known artist, whom you doubtless are acquainted with by name.' But she wound up by saying that since her health required that she should have change of air, and since I had been so very kind that she could scarcely refuse to do me any service which she could conscientiously perform, she would be happy to act as caretaker of my house, and to keep it in order during the winter for future tenants, provided I would be kind enough to understand that she and her daughter would do all the work of the house, and further that they might be permitted to reside in a strictly private manner.

'Strictly private!' I laughed heartily to myself at this expression. The dear lady could hardly wish for more privacy than she would get with four or five feet of snow piled up before her door. I was quite light-hearted at my success, and I had to tone down my manner to its usual grave and melancholy pitch before I knocked again at their door.

Mrs. Ellmer opened the door herself, thus disappointing me a little; Babiole's simple confidences, which I liked to think were the result not only of natural frankness, but of instinctive trust in me, were pleasanter to listen to than her mother's more artificial conversation. We were both very dignified, both ceremoniously grateful to each other, and when we entered the sitting-room and began to discuss preliminaries in a somewhat pompous and long-winded manner, Babiole sat, quiet as a mouse, in a corner, as if afraid to disturb by a breath the harmonious settlement of a plan on which she had set her heart.

At last all was arranged. It was now Monday; Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter were to hold themselves in readiness to enter into possession by the following Friday or Saturday, when I should return to Aberdeen to escort them to Larkhall Lodge. I rose to take my leave, not with the easy feeling of equality of the day before, but with deep humility, and repeated assurances of gratitude, to which Mrs. Ellmer replied with mild and dignified protest.

But, in the passage, Babiole danced lightly along to the door like a kitten, and holding up her finger as a sign to me to keep silence, she clapped her hands noiselessly and nodded to me several times in deliciously confiding freemasonry.

'I worked hard for it,' she said at last in a very soft whisper, her red lips forming the words carefully, near to my ear. 'Good-bye, Mr. Maude,' she then said aloud and demurely, but with her eyes dancing. And she gave my hand a warm squeeze as she shook it, and let me out into the nipping Scotch air in the gloom of the darkening afternoon, with a new and odd sense of a flash of brightness and warmth into the world.

Then I walked quickly along, devising by what means that cottage, which my guilty soul told me was bare of a single stick, could be furnished and habitable by Friday. And a cold chill crept through my bones as a new and hitherto unthought-of question thrust itself up in my mind:

What would Ferguson say?

CHAPTER VI

I made a hasty tour of the second-hand shops in Aberdeen, being wise enough to know that if she were to find the cottage too spick and span, Mrs. Ellmer would in a moment discover my pious fraud. Having got together in this way a very odd assortment of furniture, I was rather at a loss about kitchen utensils, when I was seized with the happy inspiration of buying a new set of them for my own service, and handing over those at present in use in my kitchen to Mrs. Ellmer. Not knowing much about these things, I had to buy in a wholesale fashion, more, I fancy, to the advantage of the seller than to my own. However, the business was got through somehow, the things were to be sent on the following day, and I sneaked back to Ballater by the 4.35 train, wondering how I should break the news to Ferguson, and wishing that by some impossible good luck the immaculate one might have committed in my absence some slight breach of discipline which would give me for once the superior position. If I could only find him drunk! But though second to none in his fondness for whiskey, nobody but himself could tell when he had had more than enough; so that hope was vain.

It was not that I was afraid of Ferguson; far from it. But his punctuality, his unflagging mechanical industry, his many uncompromising virtues made him a person to be reckoned with; and it would have been easier to own to a caprice inconsistent with one's principles to a more intellectual person than to him.

It was getting dark before the train stopped at Ballater, a few minutes before six. I had to go through the village, over the rickety wooden bridge—for the new one of stone was not built then—and along the road which lies on the south side of the Dee. The hills were on my left, their bases covered with slim birch-trees, whose bare branches swayed and hissed like whips in the winter wind; on the right, below the road, ran the crooked turbulent little stream of Dee, now swollen with late autumn rains, swirling round its many curves, and rushing between the piles of the bridge till the wooden structure rocked again. Would those two delicate women be frightened away by the cold and the loneliness from the nest I was building for them, I wondered, as I turned to the right to cross the little stone bridge that arches over the Muick just before that stream runs into the Dee. I stopped and looked around me. There was a faint white light over the western hills which enabled me to see dim outlines of the objects I knew. Just beyond the bridge was the forsaken little churchyard of Glenmuick, which not even a ghost would care to haunt, where now a cluster of gaunt bare ash-trees thrust up spectral arms from the ground among the mildewed grave-stones. The lonely manse, a plain stone house shadowed by dark evergreens, stood back a little from the road on the opposite side. A mile away, with the rushing Dee between, the spire of Ballater church stood up among the roofs of the village, flanked by fir-crowned Craigendarroch on the north, and the Pannanich Hills on the south. Straight on my road lay between flat Lowland fields to a ragged fringe of tall firs behind which, on a rising ground, the shell of an old deserted dwelling, known as Knock Castle, served in summer as a meagre shelter for the Highland sheep in sudden storms. At this point the road turned sharply to the left, the fringe of fir-trees growing thicker upon the skirts of the forest; a few paces farther this road divided into two branches which struck off from each other in the form of a V, the southernmost one leading to Larkhall through a mile of fir-forest. Would the very approach to their new abode through this dark and winding road depress the poor little women into looking upon the cottage as a prison, after the life and movement they were used to?

The private road which led through my own plantation to the house was divided from the public thoroughfare by no lodge, no gate, but ran modestly down between borders of grass, which grew long and rank in the summer time, for about half a mile, until, the larches and Scotch firs growing more sparsely to the south, one caught wider and wider glimpses of broad green meadows where two or three horses were turned out to find a meagre pasture. Here the drive was carried over a little iron ornamental bridge, which crossed a stream that was but a thread in the warm weather; and leaving the grass and the trees behind, one came upon a broad lawn which ran right up to the walls of the house, flanked to the north by more grass and more trees, which shut out the view of the stables and of the unused cottage. To the south the land made a sudden dip, and the hollow thus formed was laid out as a garden, while the great bank that sheltered it formed a succession of terraces from which one caught glimpses of the rushing Muick between the birches that lined the banks of the impetuous little stream.

The house was a most unpretentious building, in the plainest style of Scotch country-house architecture, with rough cream-coloured walls, a tiled roof, small irregular windows, and a mean little porch. It was only saved from ugliness by a growth of ivy over the lower portion and by a freak of the designer, whereby one end was raised a story above the rest, and the roof of this portion made to slope north and south, instead of east and west, like that of the rest of the building. At the back the firs and larches rose to a great height, the house seeming to nestle under their protection whenever the winter storms burst over the bleak hills around.

Ferguson was glad to see me, and welcomed me back with a cordiality which made my mind easier on the subject of the announcement I had to make to him. I went up to my room and, finding everything prepared for me, told him I was ready for dinner. Instead of going downstairs, he only said, 'Yes, sir; it is coming up,' and knelt down to pull off my boots.

'All right,' said I; 'I can do that. I'm very hungry.'

'No doubt of it, sir,' he answered, but did not stir. 'The fact is, sir, that knowing you would come home hungry, and maybe very much fatigued, and that to be in the kitchen serving dinner and up here attending upon you at the same time is a moral impossibility, I made bold to ask an old and very respectable female that was staying in the village to give me a little help—just for this evening, sir. She is very clean in her ways, sir, and a most respectable and God-fearing body.'

I jumped at the news, and congratulated him upon his forethought with great heartiness.

'I have no more objection to seeing a woman's face about the place than you have yourself, Ferguson,' I said cordially; 'in fact I have just given permission to two poor ladies to pass the winter in the cottage at the back, and I want you to help me to put the place straight a bit for them. They come in on Friday. I don't want the place to fall to pieces with dry rot for want of some one to live in it.'

'Ladies won't keep the dry rot out of a place, sir,' answered Ferguson, with dry contempt. 'However, you know best, sir, what kind of cattle you like to harbour in your own barns, and I daresay they'll be snug enough till the snow comes.'

This dark suggestion was but the echo to my own fears. I was so anxious to secure a co-operation in my plan, not merely perfunctory, but zealous, knowing well, as I did, the highly-sensitive mood in which the elder at least of my new tenants would arrive, that even after this scantily-gracious speech I humbled myself more than was meet.

'By the bye, Ferguson,' I began again after a short pause, during which he helped me on with my coat, 'I'm thinking of having the little north room upstairs fitted up for you, as a sort of—sort of housekeeper's room, butler's room, you know.' Mine was such a nondescript household that it was not easy to find a designation for any of the apartments, but I wished thus neatly to intimate that if my mayor of the palace had matrimonial intentions, his do-nothing king would not stand in his way. 'Now that my household is becoming larger, I daresay you would like to have some place where you and Tim and Mrs.—Miss—what did you say her name was? could sit in the evenings.'

'Neither Mrs. nor Miss anything did I say was her name,' answered Ferguson, with grave deliberation. 'Plain Janet, sir; she leaves titles to her betters. And the kitchen does very well for me, sir, and for Janet too if you care to engage her as housekeeper, after due trial of her capabilities.'

'Oh, if she satisfies you she will satisfy me.'

'None the less I should wish you to see her, that you may understand it was for your better service and not for my own pleasure that I introduced her here. I have no opinion of women, sir, until they are past the age for frivolity, and I'm not handsome enough to go courting myself.'

Whether this was a warning to me not to be beguiled into a fatal trust in the power of my own beauty, and an obscure hint that in his opinion I was in danger of making a fool of myself, Ferguson's face was too wooden to betray; but the manner in which he gave his services towards putting the cottage in order was unsatisfactory, not to say venomous. He veiled his displeasure with my new freak under an officious zeal for the comfort of the coming tenants, which was much harder to deal with than stubborn unwillingness to work for them would have been. My assurances that one was an invalid and the other a child only supplied him with fresh forms of indirect attack. He was surprised that I did not have one of the two rooms on the ground-floor fitted up as a bedroom, as invalids cannot walk up and down stairs; he was kind enough to place in one of the upper rooms, which he persisted in calling 'the nursery,' a small wooden horse of the primitive straight-legged kind, a penny rattle, and a soft fluffy parrot; and when I impatiently pitched the things out at the door he seemed dismayed, and said 'he had thought they would please the wee bairn.'

That old beast took all the pleasure out of the little excitement of furnishing. On the morning after my return, he took care to present to me the respectable Janet; he had, indeed, not overrated her magnificent lack of meretricious charms; for in the wooden face and hard blue eyes I recognised at once the features of my faithful attendant, additional wrinkles taking the place of the sabre-cut. She was his mother. As, however, neither made any reference to this fact, I treated it as a family secret and made no indiscreet inquiries.

The eventful Friday came. I was in the cottage as soon as it was light, making for the last time the tour of the two bedrooms, kitchen, and sitting-room, trying all the windows to see that they were draught-tight, passing my hands along the walls in a futile attempt to find out if they were damp. In the sitting-room I stayed a long time, moving about the furniture, a second-hand suite, covered with dark red reps; I was disgusted with the mournful bareness of the apartment, and wondered how I could have been so stupid as to forget that women liked ornaments. I went back to my house and ransacked it furtively for nicknacks, without much success. First, I reviewed the pictures: a regular bachelor's collection they were, not objectionable from a man's point of view, but for ladies——. No, the pictures were hopeless, with the exception of huge engravings, 'The Relief of Lucknow,' and 'Queen Philippa Begging the Lives of the Burgesses,' which, though perfectly innocuous to a young girl's mind, were not exhilarating to anybody's. Besides, fancy being caught by Ferguson staggering under the burden of those ponderous works of art! I had not known before how meagre were the appointments of my home; my five years of wandering had given me a traveller's indifference to all but necessaries, so that, as I looked round the study, where I spent nearly all the time that I passed indoors, I saw little that could be spared. It was a comfortable-looking room enough, with its three big windows, two looking south over the terraced garden and the wooded valley of the Muick, the remaining one east over the lawn and the drive, and more trees. The west wall of the room was filled from floor to ceiling by book-shelves of the plainest kind; these were filled, not with the student's methodically-arranged collection of sombre and well-worn volumes, not with the 'gentleman's' suspiciously neat and bright 'complete sets' in morocco and half-calf, which to remove seems as improper as to scrape off the wall-paper would be; but with the oddest of odd lots of literary ware, in a dozen languages, in all sizes and all varieties of binding and lack of binding, no two volumes of anything together, and not a book that I didn't love among them, from Montaigne, in dear dirty paper covers, hanging by a thread, to Thackeray in a beastly édition de luxe.

On the north wall was the fireplace—wide, high, old-fashioned and warm—with a discoloured white marble mantelpiece, decorated with fat bewigged Georgian cupids. Above it hung an old cavalry sword with which my father had cut his way through the Russians at Inkermann. Close to the fireplace, and with its back to the book-shelves, stood my own especial chair—big, roomy, well worn—covered with dark red morocco, like the rest of the furniture. A reading-table stood in the corner beside it, and on the right hand was a bigger table, piled high with books and papers, cigars, bills and rubbish. There was a writing-table in one corner, at which I never wrote; a sofa covered with more literary lumber; two cabinets crammed with curiosities collected on my travels, tossed in with little attempt at arrangement; a card-table on which stood a quantity of old-fashioned silver, such as tall candlesticks, goblets, a punch-bowl and a massive last-century urn. A stuffed duck, a Dutch tankard, a pair of elk's horns, and a bust of Dante surmounted by a fox's brush, occupied the top of the book-shelves. A high plain fourfold screen, as dark as the rest of the time-worn furniture, hid the door; and close to the screen a dog-kennel, with the front taken out and replaced by a strong iron grating, formed the winter home of a large brown monkey, which I had bought at a sale with the fascinating reputation of being dangerous, but which had belied its character by allowing me to bring it home on my shoulders. To-to, so called for no better reason than that my collie, whose favourite resting-place was now well defined on the goatskin hearthrug, was named Ta-ta, had from our first introduction treated me with such marked tolerance that I, in my loneliness, had begun to feel a sort of superstitious fondness for the brute, and fancied I saw more reason and affection in his blinking brown eyes than in any of the Scotch pebbles which served as organs of vision to my Gaelic neighbours. When I first bought him it was mild enough for him to live in the yard; but when the weather grew cold, and he was brought into the kitchen, he got on so ill with the powers there that I had to take compassion upon him and them, and remove To-to to the study, where he justified his promotion by the reserve and gravity of his manners, his only marked foible being a furious jealousy of Ta-ta, whose resting-place was just beyond the utmost tether of the monkey's chain. Rarely did an evening pass without some skirmish between the two. Perhaps Ta-ta, seeing me smile over the book I was reading, and anxious to share my enjoyment, even if she could not understand the joke, would incautiously get up and wag her tail. Whereupon To-to would dash across the hearthrug and assist her, and much unpleasantness would follow, the dog barking, the monkey chattering, the master swearing—all three members of the menagerie trying to come off conqueror in the mêlée. Or else To-to would fall from the top of his kennel to the floor, with a loud noise, and would lie stiff and still on the rug, as if in a fit; and then the simple Ta-ta would walk over to investigate the case, and the monkey would seize her ears and twist them round with jabbering triumph. I kept a small whip to separate the combatants on these occasions, but I only dared use it very sparingly; as, though its effect upon To-to's coarser nature was salutary in the extreme in reducing him to instant love and obedience, as the boot of the costermonger does his wife, the gentler Ta-ta would look up at me with such piteous protest in her dark eyes that I felt a brute for the next half hour.

From this room, the scene of most of my domestic life, I took a pair of silver candlesticks and a Dresden cup and saucer. Into the unused drawing-room, which I had had fitted up years ago in the Louis Quinze style, I just peeped; but there was nothing very tempting in white and gold curly-legged furniture tied up in brown holland on a cold polished floor, so I locked the door again, and carried away my prizes to the cottage, where they certainly improved the look of the sitting-room mantelpiece.

I had no sort of carriage more convenient than a Norfolk-cart, so on my way to Aberdeen I ordered a fly to be at Ballater Station on my return with my new tenants. Both the ladies were already dressed for their journey, and we started at once, Mrs. Ellmer hastening to inform me that she had sent most of her luggage to some friends in London, to account, I fancy, poor lady, for having only one shabby trunk and two stage baskets. Babiole sat very quietly during the railway journey, looking out of window at the now dreary and bleak landscape; and I spoke so little that any one might have thought I would rather have been alone. But, indeed, I was only afraid, from the happy excitement which glowed in the faces of both talkative mother and silent daughter, lest their bright expectations should be disappointed by the simplicity and desolation of the place they persisted in regarding as a palace of delights.

'It's a very homely place, you know,' I said solemnly, after being bantered in a sprightly manner by Mrs. Ellmer upon my artfulness in building myself a fortress up in the hills where, like the knights of old, I could indulge in what lawless pranks I pleased. 'And I assure you that nothing could possibly be more simple than my mode of life there. Whatever of the bold bad bandit there may have been in my composition ten years back has been melted down into mere harmless eccentricity long ago.'

'Ah! you are not going to make me believe that,' said Mrs. Ellmer, with a giddy shake of the head. 'Why, the very name Larkhall betrays you.'

I believe the dear lady really did think the name had been given in commemoration of 'high jinks' I had held there; but I hastened to assure her that 'lark' was simply the Highland pronunciation of 'larch,' a tree which grew abundantly in the neighbourhood. However, she only smiled archly, and seeing that the imaginary iniquities she seemed bent on imputing to me in no way lessened her exuberant happiness in my society, I left my character in her hands, with only a glance at Babiole, who seemed, with her eyes fixed on the moving landscape, to be deaf to what went on inside the carriage. I was rather glad of it.

When we got to Ballater the little shed of a station was crowded by rough villagers, all eagerly enjoying the splendid excitement of the arrival of the train. A dense, wet Scotch mist enveloped us as we stepped on to the platform, chilled by our cold journey; still, they both smiled with persistent happiness, which grew rapturous when we all got into a roomy fly which Mrs. Ellmer called 'your carriage.' They were charmed with the village, which looked, through the veil of fine rain, a most depressing collection of stiff stone and slate dwellings to my blasé eyes. They were delighted with the cold and dreary drive. They pronounced the dark fir-forest through which we drove 'magnificent'; and, finally, after a hushed and reverential silence as we went through the plantation, both were transfixed with admiration at the sight of my modest dwelling. Mrs. Ellmer even went so far as to admire the 'fine rugged face' of Ferguson, who was standing at the hall door scowling his worst scowl. I did not risk an encounter with him, but led the ladies straight into the cottage, where a peat fire was glowing in each of the lower rooms. We went first into the sitting-room; a lighted lamp was in the middle of the table, the tea-things were at one end. I glanced from mother to daughter, trying to read their first impression of their new home. Mrs. Ellmer's eyes, sharpened by sordid experience to hungry keenness, took in every detail at once with critical satisfaction, while her lips poured forth commonplaces of vague delight. The climax of her pleasure was the discovery of the cup and saucer on the mantelpiece. By the way in which her thin face lighted up I saw she was a connoisseur. In looking at it she forgot me and for a moment paused in her enraptured monologue.

Babiole took it all differently. She seemed to hold her breath as she looked slowly round, as if determined to gaze on everything long enough to be sure that it was real; then, with a little sob, she turned her head quickly, and her innocent eyes, soft and bright with unspeakable gratitude, fell on me.

You must have been for years an object of horror and loathing to your fellow-men to know what that look, going straight from soul to soul with no thought of the defects of the bodily envelope, was to me. Perhaps it was because my life had so long been barren of all pleasures dependent on my fellow-creatures that I could neither then, nor later that evening when I was alone, recall any sensation akin to its effect in sweetness or vividness except the glow I had felt after Babiole's girlish confidence to me at the door of the Aberdeen lodging. I suppose I must have stood smiling at the child with grotesque happiness, for Mrs. Ellmer, turning from contemplation of the cup and saucer, drew her thin lips together very sourly.

'And now I will leave you to your tea,' said I hastily. 'I told Janet to put everything ready for you.'

'Thank you, Mr. Maude, you are too good. We require no waiting on, I assure you,' broke in Mrs. Ellmer, with rather tart civility.

'Oh no, I only told her to put the kettle on in the kitchen,' I protested humbly. And, with ceremonious hopes that they would be comfortable, I retreated, Babiole giving my fingers a warm-hearted squeeze when it came to her turn to shake hands. The child was following me to let me out when her mother interposed and came with me to the door herself.

She took my hand and held it while she assured me that she was so much overpowered by my distinguished kindness and courtesy that I must excuse her if, in the effort to express her feelings adequately, she found herself without words. I'm sure I wished she would, for she went on in the same strain, making convulsive little clutches at my fingers to emphasise her speech, until both she and I began to shiver. She did not let me go until Babiole appeared behind her, flushed and smiling, in the little passage. Then Mrs. Ellmer's fingers sprang up from mine like an opened latch and, dismissed, I raised my hat and hurried off.

I had not gone half a dozen yards when I met Janet on her way to the cottage; she curtseyed and told me, in answer to my question, that she was taking some tea to the ladies. After a moment's hesitation I turned and followed her, proposing to ask them whether they would like some books.

Janet opened the door quietly without knocking, and went into the kitchen on the left, while I stood on the rough fibre mat outside the sitting-room, having grown suddenly shy about intruding again. I heard Babiole's clear childish voice.

'Oh, mamma, if only papa doesn't find us out, how happy we shall be here! Mr. Maude is a good man, I am sure of it!'

'As good as the rest of them, I daresay,' answered her mother in tones of pure vinegar. 'Understand, if you ever meet him when I'm not with you, you are not to speak to him. It makes me ill to look at his hideous wicked face. There's someone in the kitchen, run and see who it is.'

And the poor Beast, thinking he had heard enough, and afraid lest Beauty should catch him eavesdropping, slunk away from the door-mat and made his way home with his tail between his legs.